The Daily Knight

Nov 26, 2023

Vatican Heretical Joint Statement with Buddhists: ‘We see the Buddha and Jesus as Great Healers’

The Daily Knight

C: The Society for Buddhist-Christian Studios

Dethroning Christ the King once more…

Vatican Joint Statement with Buddhists: ‘We see the Buddha and Jesus as Great Healers’

The seventh so-called Buddhist-Christian Colloquium just concluded in Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 16, 2023.

The conference had been organized by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, “together with the Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, Mahamakut Buddhist University, Chinese Buddhist Order of Sangha in Thailand, Wat Phra Chetuphon, the Sirivadhanabhakdi Foundation, and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Thailand”, according to a final statement released the same day, which was published also by the ‘Holy See’ press office:

Final Statement of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue at the end of the Seventh Buddhist-Christian Colloquium (Vatican.va)

The content of the statement is terrible. Let’s examine it step by step, beginning with the fourth paragraph:

We see that a profound agreement has been reached. Onward!

Notice two things here.

First, the smooth phrase “religious traditions”. It is used more and more frequently in Vatican documents as a euphemism for the more blunt term “religions”. This is surely no accident, for if the powers that be want eventually to unite all religions under the one humanistic meta-religion of the Antichrist, it will be a lot easier to accomplish that if people think of religions in terms of mere traditions — something that has been handed on, whether true or false, good or bad, from God or from the devil.

If people are to be persuaded that all religions ultimately adore the same god and preach the same core doctrines, and that no one possesses the truth anyway because it is infinitely beyond us, it will be much easier to do that with the term “religious traditions”. Without noticing, the noun has been switched from religions to traditions. The adjective — religious — will go under very quickly. A clever linguistic sleight of hand!

Those who still claim religious supremacy or exclusivism — placing one religion above others or even saying that theirs alone is the true religion, while all others are false — will be denounced and persecuted as fundamentalists, radicals, extremists, fanatics.

We can clearly see the foundations being laid for this anti-Catholic ideology, and ‘Pope’ Francis — the apostate Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio — is at the forefront of making it happen.

Second, the claim or insinuation that the strict adherence to false religions, no less than to the only true religion, can help bring hope to mankind if only people are willing to work together. This, of course, dovetails perfectly with Francis’ false proclamation on May 4, 2019, that other religions are an ‘enrichment’ to humanity.

So what ‘hope’ to mankind does Buddhism bring, or Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Shintoism, Voodooism, etc.? Certainly not any hope of a spiritual-supernatural kind, since these religions, as creations of man or the devil, are the very antithesis of the only religion revealed by God: “Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6).

The only kind of hope one could possibly gather from false religions would be, at best, that of a natural sort, a kind of optimism regarding man’s temporal happiness, since they are devoid of any supernatural salvific power. In other words, it would not be the hope of eternal salvation but the hope of better living conditions: having clean water, living in safety, earning enough money. These are important things, but they ultimately still end at death: “For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting, in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Gal 6:8).

Furthermore, although even false religions could help generate such naturalistic hope, they would do so not in their capacity of being religions but in their capacity of possessing certain truths that are knowable by means of natural reason. It has nothing to do with them being religions per se. In fact, false religions as such would be a hindrance to these natural truths, since anything true they may contain can only be found in them mixed together with many serious errors.

This means that in order to be able to extract some natural hope from false religions, there is a price to be paid. Buddhism, to use this particular false religion as an example, does not come in elements. It comes as one entire package. One can only extract whatever ‘good elements’ might exist in Buddhism by imbibing the whole toxic concoction. In other words, Buddhism offers certain natural truths and natural virtues only at the price of supernatural truth and life. That is, the best it could possibly do is aid the life of the body by requiring the death of the soul. A bad bargain if there ever was one!

By putting Catholicism and other religions on an equal footing, this paragraph in the final document is blasphemous and utterly indefensible. For either they are speaking about hope as a supernatural virtue, in which case it would be a blasphemy and a heresy to say that other religions can also bring this hope to humanity — or they are speaking of hope only in a naturalist sense, in which case it would be blasphemy to drag Catholicism down to the level of the false religions, as if the Church and the Gospel had no greater hope to offer to mankind than making the world a better place – until you die.

The next paragraph in the document is even worse:

Notice that it is both Buddhists and Christians who are said to view both Buddha and Jesus Christ as great healers. That is, the ‘Christians’ are acknowledging Buddha as a great healer too, and the Buddhists supposedly do the same with Christ. If the adverb “respectively” had been used, it would not be nearly as bad, because then it would mean that Buddhists recognize Buddha as a great healer, and Christians recognize Christ as one. But the word “respectively” was not used. (They use it in various other places in the text, including this very paragraph, thus understanding its significance and making this particular omission even more conspicuous and noteworthy.)

It is despicable how the joint statement, presented by the Vatican, again puts the Son of God and Savior of the World on the same level as the pagan Buddha. In this particular paragraph, they make it seem as if the medicine given by Christ were of the same kind and effectiveness as the false philosophy of Buddha. Whatever few individual natural truths may be contained in Buddha’s proposed way of living, they are no match for the perfect supernatural truths revealed by Christ, who created man and calls him to the Beatific Vision: “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life” (Jn 6:64).

Moreover, Our Blessed Lord did not merely teach the true way of living, He also provided the means to live in this manner: grace. Apart from Christ’s grace, no supernatural hope or salvation would be possible. With this grace, we may hope for eternal life:

To reduce the Gospel, the life-giving words of the Word (cf. Jn 1:1), to the status of heathen ideology is an abomination of staggering proportions!

Without God’s help, fallen man can never free himself from his miserable condition. He can never save himself; he can never expiate his own sins, nor can he overcome concupiscence. Our sinful human condition can only be remedied by means of the redemptive work of Christ. Only through His grace can our fallen nature be buried and we be regenerated in baptism, becoming a ‘new man’ in Christ:

The guilt of original sin having been taken away in baptism, its wounds (consequences) remain: “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another: so that you do not the things that you would” (Gal 5:17). This tendency to sin is what we mean by concupiscence, and the only remedy for it is prayer and self-denial (mortification), tracing with Christ the way of the Cross: “And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27). Thus St. Paul exhorts the Philippians to work out their salvation “with fear and trembling” (2:12).

None of Buddha’s ideas can accomplish anything in that regard. No matter how many times Francis hints at the notion, salvation by natural means is impossible:

Salvation by Compassion? Debunking Francis’ latest Demagoguery

Again and again we find that the Novus Ordo Modernists involved in interfaith dialogue reject the Catholic doctrine on original sin. We can see this in the following insane comments:

Apparently this ‘Bp.’ Schmitthaeusler has never heard of original sin. He describes the world before the fall of man, that is, he describes paradise. But that is not the world we live in.

When sin entered into the world, all creation was affected (cf. Rom 8:22), and for human beings, their likeness to God was lost, and the image of God in them was obscured. Only through sanctifying grace and actual grace can we remedy this condition. This is basic Catholic catechism.

If Mr. Schmitthaeusler is dreaming of a world in which there is neither rich nor poor, he is dreaming a Communist dream. The existence of different social classes among men is not wrong, and to attempt to eliminate them would be to destroy society. Popes Leo XIII and Pius X said as much, as we will see shortly.

‘Bp.’ Schmitthaeusler does not understand, or at least does not believe, that there is no commission from Christ to build some great ‘civilization of luv’ consisting of people of all creeds who live together in the bonds of dignity, dialogue, respect, and fraternity. Rather, as Pope St. Pius X said,

A Catholic’s task must be to build Christian civilization! Even if it cannot always be accomplished, it must always be the goal.

The final statement issued by the Vatican’s interreligious dialogue crew along with the Buddhists continues:

Notice how they continually equate “inequality” with “injustice”, as if the two concepts were interchangeable. But they are not.

On Dec. 18, 1903, Pope St. Pius X issued an Apostolic Letter motu proprio entitled Fin Dalla Prima Nostra, in which he presented in summary fashion in the context of the lay Catholic Action movements the teachings of his predecessor Leo XIII on the social question. Among them are the following truths (notice the beautiful emphasis on man’s supernatural end):

The joint ‘Christian’-Buddhist statement continues:

Notice how they draw their conclusion from a premise that is simply asserted without evidence: “No one is saved alone”. It is a mantra introduced by ‘Pope’ Francis around 2020, and its meaning is rather elusive, for the word “saved” does not fit the context in which it is usually presented, namely, that of making the world a better place. But no one typically speaks of the attainment of temporal necessities as being “saved”.

Here we see the Vatican endorsing pagan literature as “religious classics” and it contents as “wisdom”. Perhaps the Vatican publishing house can begin to reprint them so as to make them “relevant to our wounded humanity”. Oops! They already did:

‘Life of Buddha’: Francis gifts Vatican-published Manuscript celebrating Paganism to President of Myanmar

By no means does Francis want Buddhists to abandon their false and dangerous ‘spiritual’ teachings. Back in March of this year, the fake pope expressed to a delegation of Buddhists his “hope that this educational pilgrimage will lead you, guided by the thoughts of your spiritual teacher Buddha, to a deeper encounter with yourselves and with others, with the Christian tradition, and with the beauty of the earth, our common home” (source; underlining added).

No one confirms infidels in their infidelity quite like Francis!

Prayer and meditation are very different things for a Catholic compared to what they are for a Buddhist. For a Catholic to sign a statement that expresses Buddhists’ desire to “reawaken the spiritual energy” in other Buddhists, is an unspeakable disgrace. Once again we see a reckless equalization or relativization taking place, if not directly, at least in effect.

To underscore how evil this is, we turn to a Vatican-endorsed book published in 1886 against the then-emerging Liberalism, which was a foreshadowing of the errors of Vatican II. The work in question is Liberalism is a Sin (#commissionlink) by Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany. It is a devastating refutation of the Novus Ordo religion, written roughly 80 years in advance. See what Fr. Sarda, with the explicit approval of Pope Leo XIII’s Sacred Congregation of the Index, wrote about how antithetical to true Catholicism the Liberal attitude towards Buddhism is:

No one in the Vatican interreligious dicastery, much less the ‘Pope’ himself, is in the least concerned for the salvation of pagans. Even if they do not come out and state directly and explicitly that all religions are equally good, they undoubtedly hold that all religions are at least good enough for salvation — if salvation is even a meaningful concept for them, at this point.

But this is not a position a Catholic is allowed to hold, for it is nothing short of the heresy of religious indifferentism — the idea that it ultimately doesn’t matter what religion you are. In 1846, Pope Pius IX taught:

Notice that there is no talk here of honoring ‘what is good and holy in other religions’ — neither is there talk of ‘ecclesial elements’ or of the Holy Ghost using other religions as means of salvation, as Vatican II says.

In 1928, Pope Pius XI condemned “that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule” (Encyclical Mortalium Animos, n. 2).

Interreligious dialogue — which ‘Pope’ Benedict XVI underscored in 2012 “does not aim at conversion, but at understanding” — inevitably tends to indifferentism or relativism.

In 1892, Pope Leo XIII warned:

That is exactly what we’re seeing today, and no one should be fooled by the Vatican’s recent document reiterating that Catholics cannot join the Freemasons, a mere alibi paper that is as credible as Planned Parenthood lobbying for child safety.

Other links of interest regarding the Vatican II Church’s approach to Buddhism can be found here:

Kentucky Trappists receive Buddhist Monks
Jesuit Superior ‘Fr.’ Arturo Sosa visits Buddhist Temple (fun pictures!)

The Catholic author Fr. Michael Müller (1825-1899) hit the nail on the head when he wrote: “It is impious to say, ‘I respect every religion.’ This is as much as to say: I respect the devil as much as God, vice as much as virtue, falsehood as much as truth, dishonesty as much as honesty, Hell as much as Heaven” (The Church and Her Enemies, p. 287).

And that is precisely what the apostate, post-Catholic Vatican is doing now. They no longer care for God, for truth, for the supernatural, for souls. All they care about is making the world a better place.

But even that won’t succeed, for the very world they are trying to make a better place was made by the same God who gave us His revelation in Jesus Christ with a mission to save souls from hell.

The inevitable end result of the Vatican II Sect apostasy will be hell here on earth and hell forever thereafter. Have no part with it!